Now. To the general situation. I have a fantasy that smart intelligent creative cool awesome people like myself are more prone to resist overt tyranny and fascism as the cited article describes. In my fantasy therefore despite these problems there is still hope because in the end - because brilliant competent people are smart and resist - that the companies that do these things will fail, and those that respect civil rights and privacy will succeed. And over time freedom and sanity will increase.

Of course I'm probably wrong, and the people who hate freedom rule the world. After all the Nazis were very smart and stylish guys.

But one can always dream. Especially when the alternative is to give up all hope and sit at home with a glass of whisky and a loaded revolver, wondering if tonight will be the night the pain finally ends. I think hope, even if inane and based on fallacious premises, is a better road.

Your best bet, CR, is to go into management. No one monitors them like that. I was part of management at one job and had the unfortunate job of flagging people that overstepped their bounds on the internet. I had to give reports to my management. Most people were good, but I caught a pedophile, and an addicted gambler with a prostitute problem using the company network to do their thing. I also caught some people that did nothing but email and FB every day.

Companies have these things in place because of people like the ones that I caught. Its also because of bandwidth. Most people keep themselves in check, but the bad apples ruin it for everyone.

Well the article was about physical tracking of employee movements and also sensors on each employee that record and monitor what they say throughout the day, and metrics tracked such as "latency" which is how long between synergizing, strategizing and sharing with other partners (talking).

Regarding monitoring net usage, yeah, I've been in charge of that too. One thing I had to do was get rid of the massive porn stashes on everybody's computers. The guys that had extraordinary amounts of it or especially freaky stuff I'd often find a way to work into any conversation with them what I do. The premise would be that it was just a random conversation and nothing to do with them. Like if they say "Did you hear about Sue getting fired after she punched Betty in the face? That was some crazy stuff." I'd say "Oh yeah, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on here. Did you know I'm responsible for removing the porn from everybody's computer?" (they'd try not to react at this point) "Yeah, some people are into some pretty freaky stuff. I have to compile a list of what was found for management." (I didn't really do this.) "Can you imagine people using their work computer to store this stuff? Isn't that nuts?" They'd agree that was nuts and they'd be completely pale. And they'd stop downloading porn.

I would never use the work computer for anything non-work-related myself as I assume everything is tracked. Likewise with the phone. I use my own device when posting to places like here, or if I have to use a work computer for some emergency personal use it'll be through an encrypted proxy.

With all this employee physical tracking, if Bob and Sue are staying late on Mondays and spend 30 minutes together in the same bathroom... hm, management knows about that it would appear.

One thing I had to do was get rid of the massive porn stashes on everybody's computers. The guys that had extraordinary amounts of it or especially freaky stuff I'd often find a way to work into any conversation with them what I do.

Funny, and very kind of you to give your idiot peers a head's up.

Hard drives are CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. What in the flying fudge is any employee doing with massive porn stashes on his work computer? God bless, people are stupid as a rock.

When I worked at a small shitty defense contractor about 15 years ago there was a guy who was summarily fired from the place. He had a private office because he had some researchy job title. He would sometimes be inaccessible and "busy" for many hours every work day.

Apparently all of the office computers went through a proxy in the office and the management started looking at the logs.

It turned out that the guy was privately "jackin' it" to online content for many hours every week.

Logged

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